The Jewish Vote 2020: More Empowered Than Powerful
Gil Troy
“The Jewish Vote 2020: More Empowered Than Powerful,” authored by the Ruderman Family Foundation and Prof. Gil Troy, a distinguished scholar in North American History at McGill University and an award-winning American presidential historian. It highlights a wide array of notable data points from public opinion surveys conducted in recent years
The paper is divided into three parts.
- Part I looks at Jewish voting and giving patterns, summarizing how Jews punch far above their weight politically thanks to older, wealthier, educated voters in relevant regions.
- Part II explores the history of Jewish liberalism in America and suggests that while voting Democratic is often considered as central to the American Jewish inheritance as immigration, it evolved more gradually in three stages.
- Part III examines the ugly anti-Semitism that coursed through the 2016 campaign; the ongoing debate about President Barack Obama’s and President Donald Trump’s policies toward America, the Jews, and Israel; and some of the top items on the agenda as the 2020 campaign comes to a close.
Foreword, Professor Gil Troy
The 2020 presidential campaign already is emerging as yet another flashpoint seemingly dividing Israeli Jews from American Jews. We are told that Israelis are dumbfounded by the American Jewish hatred for Donald Trump. He moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem. He scotched Barack Obama’s dangerous Iran deal. He recognized the settlements as legal. He stands up to Palestinians, “they” say. How can you not vote for him? Where’s your loyalty to the Jewish State? And we are told that American Jews are equally dumbfounded by the Israeli love for Donald Trump. How dare you, “they” say. He encourages anti-Semitism, appeals to anti-Semites, and is anti-Semitic himself. Besides, his crass, vulgar, demagoguery makes him a disaster for the country and a threat to the world. How could Israel be one of the few countries in the world that approves of him and how could I possibly vote for him?
The conversation sometimes degenerates to Israelis admitting, “I’d rather have a pro-Israel meshugana like Trump than an anti-Israel mensch like Obama.” More, frequently, however, in our age of all-or-nothing support of politicians, Israelis praise Trump as unreservedly as anti-Trump Jews condemn him. Pro-Trump Israelis express few moral qualms with his leadership: after all, “he’s pro-Israel” – although the Syria turnaround was unnerving; anti-Trumpers cannot even thank him for fulfilling a forty-year-old bipartisan promise to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Of course, communities are complex, not caricatures. Some American Jews – especially 71 percent of Orthodox Jews as of September, 2017[1] – support Donald Trump because of his dramatic pro-Israel moves and statements. And some Israelis share most American Jews’ disdain for Trump’s demagoguery, xenophobia, and seemingly anti-Semitic dog whistling.
Still, even if overstated, this clash is instructive. It emphasizes the growing perception, spreading left and right, that most American Jews are separating from Israel – even though it is not true. It highlights the widespread impressions among some Israeli Jews and American non-Jews that American Jews are one-issue voters, always voting for the most pro-Israel politician – even though that has rarely been true over the decades. And it allows us to see that the real questions about “the Jewish vote” do not revolve around the negligible impact Jews have on the final results every Election Day. Analyzing who Jews vote for tells us more about why they vote than what their vote achieves. It illuminates the ongoing and outsized role Jews play in the American political process, as well as the ongoing and outsized role American politics plays in many American Jews’ identity.
A joke from the 2016 campaign captured this identity dynamic crudely but cleverly, suggesting that the real drift among Jewish Democrats wasn’t away from Israel, but from Judaism itself:
Question: What’s the difference between Donald Trump and a liberal Jew.
Answer: Trump has Jewish grandchildren.
PART I: How Do Jews Do Politics During the Presidential Campaign?
The Jewish Vote is about Identity more than Impact, but there is some impact
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, the “Jewish Vote” once again attracted much attention without affecting the final outcome that much. But, in Jewish terms, 2016 stood out. Jewish issues proved to be more central in this campaign than perhaps in any other campaign in American history. Even as the presidential season proved yet again just how Americanized American Jews were, spurts of Jew-hatred clouded the campaign. Still, in an election fight so hard to forecast nearly every pollster got it wrong, there was one easy prediction. It was clear that come Inauguration Day, 2017, as the joke emphasized, the new president would have a Jewish son-in-law, the first Jew ever to belong to the First Family.
A close look at the Jewish Question in 2016 disproves another truism that has become especially popular among the most defensive Israelis and the most critical American Jews. Those on the Right and the Left often claim that American Jews are distancing themselves from Israel. Yet, once again, as in 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000, and almost every election since 1948, both major party nominees competed to prove who was more pro-Israel, not less. Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of American Jews are not just pro-Israel, but proud of their connection to the Jewish state.[2]
This does not mean, however, that when American Jews entered the voting booth, their decisions depended on either candidate’s stance toward Israel. Actually, it was the opposite. Many Democrats who hated Donald Trump expressed their contempt by insisting he wasn’t as pro-Israel as he claimed to be, just as many Republicans who hated Hillary Clinton insisted she wasn’t as pro-Israel as she claimed to be. Beyond that, American Jews, like most Americans, voted based on their domestic worries, not the candidates’ foreign policy stands. Just as, in the voting booth, most Israelis vote on statehood and not peoplehood issues, but that doesn’t make them against Jewish peoplehood, most American Jews vote pro-choice or anti-Trump, even though they are pro-Israel too.
When we talk about “the Jewish Vote,” then, we are addressing a number of different issues. First, every presidential contest is ultimately an exercise in raw political power, democratically dictating who gets to lead the nation. It is fascinating to track the prominent role Jews, a small minority, play in American politics -- and try understanding why. It offers interesting insights about Americans Jews - and about American democracy. Second, every campaign is also a referendum, reflecting and shaping the national conversation, along with the internal Jewish communal debate. Finally, every vote is not just a snapshot, summarizing each voter’s most compelling likes and dislikes, values and interests, it is a long-running movie, reflecting each voter’s identity, on many levels. The defining political facts about American Jewry remain that, while 93 percent of American Jews are proud to be Jewish, two-thirds of them fuse their Judaism with their liberalism, often seeing their vote for Democrats as a moral position, a rational decision, a protective move, and testimony to who they are as Americans, as Jews, and as human beings.[3]
In this historical moment, when President Donald Trump has been so flamboyantly pro-Israel, and the Democratic Party, while still mostly pro-Israel, has become the major American political party most welcoming to anti-Israel voters too, American Jewry’s deep commitment to the Democratic Party feels to many Israelis as an act of disloyalty. This is the tension Trump kept exploiting with his many controversial, pot-stirring Tweets, as the 2020 campaign heated up.
Jewish Power: Thanks to Older, Wealthier, Educated voters in Relevant Regions
In 2014, noting that Jews constituted only two percent of the population, Emma Green of the Atlantic marveled: “Here are some of the other constituencies that make up two percent of the American electorate: customer-service representatives. People who participate in archery and bow hunting. AOL users. Residents of Indiana.” So, she wondered, “why all the attention” to the Jewish vote?[4]
In fact, in a country where barely 50 percent[5] go to the polls, Jewish voter turnout averages around 85 percent – with the demographer Ira Sheskin estimating that 95 percent of Jews voted in strategically important areas such as the Detroit Metropolitan Area in the critical, electoral-vote-rich state of Michigan.[6] In a political system addicted to funds and fundraising, some estimate that Jews donate as much as fifty percent of the funds from individual big donors raised by Democrats and 25 percent of such funds raised by Republicans. In 2016, six of the seven most generous political donors were Jewish. The seventh -- the biggest giver, Tom Steyer -- was married in an interfaith ceremony and while Episcopalian today, remains proud that his Jewish father was a prosecutor in the Nuremburg anti-Nazi trials. The 2020 campaign *has [began with] one Jew, Bernie Sanders, as a leading Democratic candidate; one marginal Jewish candidate, Marianne Williamson; one candidate, Kamala Harris, married to a Jew; and one candidate, Cory Booker, fond of quoting Jewish scripture, all opposing a President with Jewish grandchildren. *[Just as this paper was being written,] For a few weeks another Jew – Michael Bloomberg – threw his hat into the ring and announced he was joining the race. Beyond that, Jews constitute nearly seven percent of the 116th Congress, with eight Jewish senators and 26 Jewish members of the House of Representatives[7]. The Supreme Court is also one-third Jewish, with three Jewish members of the nine life members.
In a presidential system pivoting on key “swing states” closely split between Republicans and Democrats, like Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, Jews have sizeable concentrations in southern Florida, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and suburban Detroit. Finally, since the 2016 campaign, issues around support for Israel and anti-Semitism have been debated in the media and online with particular intensity.
While one shouldn’t overstate Jews’ communal ability to determine the electoral outcome, American Jews do punch above their weight politically. Jews are, as the political scientist Kenneth Wald explains, “supervoters” and “superdonors.”[8] The acronym POWER summarizes their Punch as statistically Older, Wealthier, Educated and living in Relevant Regions - all of which are indicators and motivators of greater political involvement.
Beyond that, what Jimmy Carter’s chief political advisor, Hamilton Jordan, wrote in 1977 remains true: “it is a mistake to take note of Jewish contributions to political campaigns without seeing this in the larger context of the Jewish tradition of using one's material wealth for the benefit of others.”[9]
Jewish Donors as a Major Source of Jewish Power: Identity and Impact
For decades now, Jewish donors have had an outsized impact on political fundraising. In his 1977 memorandum explaining American Jewish politics to President Carter, Hamilton Jordan wrote admiringly: “Out of 125 members of the Democratic National Finance Council, over 70 are Jewish. In 1976, over 60% of the large donors to the Democratic Party were Jewish. Over 60% of the monies raised by [President Richard] Nixon in 1972 was from Jewish contributors. Over 75% of the monies raised in [Hubert] Humphrey's 1968 campaign was from Jewish contributors. Over 90% of the monies raised by Scoop Jackson in the Democratic primaries was from Jewish contributors. Underlining his conclusion, Jordan wrote: “Wherever there is major political fundraising in this country, you will find American Jews playing a significant role.”[10]
Before the post-Watergate reforms of the late 1970s, donors writing big checks funded a large percentage of any given presidential campaign. Today, limits on direct giving to presidential campaigns and opportunities for public financing have broadened the base of donors exponentially, reducing the impact any group of individuals could have on the overall budget. Still, in the first six months of the 2019 leadup to the 2020 campaign, Aiden Pink of The Forward estimated that 5.5 percent of Democratic donors were Jews who donated at least 7 percent of the total contributions, with Peter Paul Montgomery – better known as Pete – Buttigieg starting off as the most popular Democrat in the field among Jewish donors.[11]
More dramatically, in the candidates’ constant search for unregulated “soft money” which buoys political campaigns in numerous ways, Jews continue to lead generously. Back in 2003, Thomas B. Edsall and Alan Cooperman estimated in the Washington Post that in “presidential elections, Democratic candidates depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 percent of the money raised from private sources.[12]” In the 2001 to 2005 election cycle, the Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, working through the Saban Capital Group, contributed $9,280,000 of the $162,062,084 the Democratic National Committee and its affiliates raised. The top ten donors overall in 2016 contributed 406.3 million dollars, with 356.8 million from Jews, including contributions by Tom Steyer. Early on in the current election cycle, George Soros became the first big donor to the 2020 campaign with a $5.1 million gift establishing Democracy PAC.
While most Jewish donors were Democrats like Soros and Saban, the Jewish financial vote remained disproportionately important for both parties. During the 2016 primary season, one Washington Post analysis estimated that nearly half the Super PAC money —$249 million of $607 million—came from 50 donors.[13] J. J. Goldberg of The Forward then estimated that 20 of the 50 mega-donors were Jewish: 9 of the 36 Republicans and at least 11 of the 14 Jews.[14] These figures predated the entry of Sheldon Adelson into the 2016 funding game, as the Las Vegas casino mogul and Republican benefactor, who set records in political gift-giving in 2012, sat out the confusing early rounds of that cycle. By November, Sheldon Adelson had donated 82.6 million dollars,[15] with another Jewish conservative in the top ten, Paul Singer, donating 26.1 million dollars.[16]
Jewish money deviates from the usual Jewish Vote script in two critical ways. First, wealthy Republican donors, especially Adelson and Singer over the last decade or so, have shaped Republican politics too, encouraging the recurring, so-far-always-incorrect, predictions that “the Jews” were veering right, rather than “some Jews.” Second, single-issue politics, especially support for Israel, often counts more during the fundraising sweepstakes than on Election Day. The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, dozens of other Jewish political action committees (PACs), and individual Jewish donors, such as Saban the Democrat and Adelson the Republican, earmark campaign funds for candidates who pass either explicit or implicit pro-Israel litmus tests.
Such targeted support is, of course, a legitimate democratic exercise, engaged in by most donors. But thanks to the growing toxicity of the debate about Israel and traditional anti-Semitic tropes about Jews, money and power, critics have been far quicker to exaggerate the Jewish concern for Israel and make it seem illegitimate.
Jew-hatred, centered on fears of Jewish influence-peddling, offers a rare plane on which the far Left and the far Right often meet. From the left, academics like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt led the charge against “the Israel Lobby”[17] and its supposed undue influence on American foreign policy. From the right, talk of “ZOG” -- the Zionist Occupied Government - summarized the ugly whisperings about the “shekels” injected into American politics to boost Israel. In truth, the broad-based public support for Israel over decades has been organic and natural, more grassroots than Astroturf. No lobby is powerful enough to convince 70 percent of Americans to approve of something as consistently as Americans have supported the Jewish state.
When they caught rival candidates in the act of appealing to Jews directly about Israel—rather than pandering on any other issue—opponents acted scandalized. Early in Democrat Michelle Nunn’s losing 2014 campaign for the U.S. Senate seat from Georgia, a fundraising memo her consultants wrote that targeted pro-Israel Jews and noted that “Michelle’s position on Israel will largely determine the level of support” in the “Jewish community” was leaked to National Review. More sophisticated observers, including a blogger on Vox, noted that “this is getting spun in certain circles as a damning indictment of Nunn or her staff, as if she is planning to tailor her entire foreign policy around fundraising concerns. … But really, it’s just people doing their jobs.”[18]
Beyond the dollars and cents involved, which are particularly important in the “Invisible Primary”—the early posturing, fundraising, friend-raising and debating in the months leading up to the first primaries and caucuses -- there is also symbolic value to gaining Jewish support. Benjamin Ginsberg, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, explained that Jews “account for a huge share of the activist base of the Democratic Party and account for much of the money available to Democratic candidates. If you are a Republican strategist, it seems fairly obvious that if you can shift Jewish support even a little bit away from the Democrats, it makes the Democratic Party less competitive.”[19]
In this age of renewed anti-Semitism, when Jew-haters left and right keep resurrecting old slurs about Jews being rich and power-hungry, perhaps this entire discussion about Jews’ disproportionate impact should come with warning labels. Truthfully, the statistics about Jewish fundraising and voting are intelligent guesstimates, partially based on prominent scholars like the demographer Ira Sheskin identifying Jewish last names, residential neighborhoods, and voting patterns.[20] The results, especially the voting turnout rates, are further complicated by limited sample sizes.
Most important, money isn’t everything in politics, especially in the age of social media. In 2016 former Florida Governor Jeb Bush joined Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury John Connally, among others, in a long line of well-financed candidates who fizzled. Bush raised more than $150 million dollars to go home with no states won and an unhappy nickname for his troubles, having been christened by Trump as “Low Energy Jeb.”
Jews should not apologize for the fact that so many fellow Jews are disproportionately generous, community-minded, and politically engaged. If anti-Semites spin those admirable qualities into dark conspiracies, shame on the accusers not the accused. And, inevitably, the bigots run into contradictory slurs: if Jews are “cheap” and “greedy” how can “they” also be so generous? Such pushback highlights the idiocy behind generalizing about “the” Jews, and the enmity behind these demonizations, which have a long, ugly history.
Surprises for Israelis
Israelis will be amused to hear that most American Jews define Judaism as inherently liberal. Since 1977, Israelis have elected more right-wing governments than left-wing governments and many feel betrayed by Progressives in Europe and North America. American Orthodox and traditional Jews also find the oft-used “Judaism-is-liberalism” equation amusing, because in an ever-polarized America, they are increasingly conservative politically as well as religiously.
Israelis will be fascinated to learn that many American Jews locate the Promised Land in North America, not in the Middle East. They will be distressed to hear that American Jews rarely vote with Israel in mind and usually prioritize American issues. They will complain yet again about the many liberal American Jews who could not thank President Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, for validating Israel’s Golan Heights annexation, for acknowledging the settlements are not illegal, or for pressuring two of Israel’s most hostile neighbors: the Palestinians and Iran.
But Israelis will be heartened to discover that despite that neglect on Election Day, and contrary to the many hysterical headlines, reports of the great rift between Israel and even liberal American Jews are often overstated. According to a Gallup analysis in August, 2019, only 35 percent of Jews approve of Trump’s presidency, 44 percent of Jews call themselves liberal and 65 percent support the Democratic Party. However, 76 percent of Jews say they are at least somewhat emotionally attached to Israel, while an overwhelming 95 percent of Jews have favorable views of Israel.[21]
In short, Donald Trump and his best friends in Israel should take notice. Most American Jews are anti-Trump and pro-Israel. Older research from the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center at Brandeis University surveys shows something intriguing – which still appears to be true. Unlike twenty and thirty years ago, twenty-to-thirty year olds tend to be even more pro-Israel than thirty-to-forty year olds.[22]
Because most Americans and American politicians champion the idea of a Jewish state while passionately supporting Israel over the Palestinians, voters in a presidential contest have never had to choose between a “pro-Israel” or “anti-Israel" candidate. Some mainstream American politicians may be more critical of Israel or sympathetic to the Palestinians than others, but – as of 2016 -- no major party presidential nominee has ever accepted the label “anti-Israel” or earned that dishonorable status by rejecting Israel’s right to exist. As noted, in most elections, including 2016, the Democratic and Republican candidates squabble over who is more “pro-Israel” and who better defends the Jewish State. Considering Jews’ unhappy history, when leaders often competed to prove who could hit Jews harder, American Jews should appreciate their good fortune.
It is because of these ongoing trends that Trump's assertion that “any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,”[23] attacks most American Jews. The statement should set off alarm bells for Jews and Israelis – but not the ones it did. Many thought Trump was playing the old “dual loyalty” card, dismissing Jews as shifty and untrustworthy. Others doubt he is that sophisticated. Trump is obsessed with loyalty. He has Tweeted dozens of times questioning the loyalty and gratitude of supporters. He even chided Hillary Clinton for her supposed character flaw of not being loyal enough to her people. As his re-election campaign heats up, the gap between the loyalty and gratitude he expects from Jews for being pro-Israel and the Jewish fury and fear his presidency has unleashed, could shake his support for Israel – unless Evangelicals, who are grateful and committed to both Trump and Israel, continue reinforcing it.
The present analysis, offering a historical perspective, suggests that the same behaviors—voting Democratic, being liberal—have had different motivations and meanings over the years. America has changed. Liberalism has changed. The Jewish community has changed -- and changed America. But, this alliance persists, defying its many eulogies.
The liberal-Jewish-Democratic connection has strengthened, not weakened, especially in the Age of Trump. America’s Jews are mostly “blue,” highly enraged and engaged politically. That doesn’t make them un-American—only that the blue field of their Red, White, and Blue identity is the largest, strongest, and deepest. Similarly, it doesn’t make them against Israel, whose colors are Blue and White, but only more enthusiastic about some aspects of Israel than others.
PART II: The History of Jewish Liberalism in America
How Judaism became “Liberal” – in America
Despite that bizarre, aforementioned point where boastful Jews and vicious anti-Semites meet – with both exaggerating the Jewish vote’s importance – Jews have rarely been the deciding factor in hiring or firing a president. Having written a book about American presidential election campaigns that never mentions “the Jewish vote,” and edited an encyclopedia on the history of American presidential elections that barely refers to Jews, I can state authoritatively that Jews have usually been marginal players in most electoral outcomes.[24]
The most significant Jewish vote played out in what I nicknamed the Big Butterfly Ballot Bungle of 2000. That year, as many as 19,000 nearsighted, elderly Jewish voters in southern Florida, many of them New York “snowbirds,” marked their “butterfly ballots” for the anti-Israel Third Party candidate Pat Buchanan rather than for the pro-Israel Democrat Al Gore (or for both). Those mass errors created the electoral deadlock that resulted in George W. Bush’s presidency -- depriving America of its first Jewish vice president, Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Less directly, in 1980, many Jews’ disgust with Jimmy Carter’s pro-Palestinian UN policies helped Ted Kennedy win the New York primary. That victory kept the Massachusetts liberal in the race, weakening Carter against Ronald Reagan in the fall.
These examples highlight the most relevant fact: Even with a disproportionately high Jewish voter turnout and the Jewish concentration in key battleground states and major media markets, there simply are not enough American Jews to sway American elections.
Just as most Americans after the Civil War defined themselves as Democrats or Republicans, “becuz that’s how my daddy and granddaddy voted,” voting Democratic is often considered as central to the American Jewish inheritance as are an inspirational immigration story, silver candlesticks, and grandma’s matzah ball recipe. George W. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer has often said that when his “horrified” parents discovered that he had become a Republican activist in college, they told sympathetic neighbors in their liberal New York suburb: “at least he’s not a drug addict.”[25]
Moreover, as noted, despite the writer Peter Beinart’s claim that most American Jews feel forced to “check their liberalism at Zionism’s door,”[26] most American Jews still embrace liberalism and Zionism.
Most American Jewish liberals define their liberalism as simply, naturally and obviously “Jewish,” repudiating not only their conservative Jewish cousins in the United States but non-liberal Jews worldwide, including in Israel. The great writer Leon Wieseltier counters: “Judaism is not liberal and it is not conservative: it is Jewish.”[27]
In fact, American Jewish liberalism is quintessentially American. It not only reflects America’s uniqueness but something else most historians ignore. Too many discussions about American Jewry treat American Jews as passive actors collectively, even while emphasizing their extraordinary impact individually. The story of American Jewish liberalism is not only about how American Jews found an ideological home in the United States, but how they redefined American liberalism to make it even more welcoming.
The biggest shift has been in the rise of a cultural liberalism to accompany a social welfare mentality. While some Jews like Irving Kristol and Allan Bloom have been prominent critics of the new cultural relativism and political correctness, many Jewish intellectuals and professors helped mainstream that approach. Just as many prominent American Jewish thinkers and activists helped define the New Deal and shape the Civil Rights movement, it is impossible to conceive of the new cultural sensibilities without forces like feminism, the broader sexual revolution, the movement toward gay marriage, and the validating imprimatur of Hollywood, all of which had disproportionate shares of influential Jews. All these forces established new lifestyles and protocols which pried American cultural life away from the control of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) of the 1950s. American Jewish liberalism today, as in preceding decades, is a cultural and political phenomenon -- it is about identity not just issues, and it is about standing up aggressively so American Jews can fit in naturally.
This tenacious American Jewish political identity reveals much about the American Jewish community and America itself. Ultimately, the story of the Jewish Vote is one illustrative chapter in the great romance between America and its Jews. This love story is rooted in American exceptionalism. This American exceptionalism emphasizes the uniqueness of America’s history, especially compared to Europe’s. It is reflected in the astonishing Jewish success in America—the many American celebrities, billionaires, intellectuals, and leaders who are Jewish, as well as the deep sense of comfort most Jews enjoy in America.
This, then, is the story of the American Jewish vote—a story of contradictions and confusions, of frustration for the Right and inspiration for the Left, a story, ultimately, about cultural identity and shared fears, more than political stands or personalities. It is a story often reported as yet another blow to the unity of the Jewish people and the America-Israel alliance. In fact, it reflects Jews’ remarkable solidarity and helps explain this ongoing friendship between this tiny, embattled democracy and the US, the democratic world’s “New Colossus.”
American Jewish Liberalism: Big-Hearted, Dim-Witted – or Both?
In 1988, the liberal writer Leonard Fein affirmed: “Politics is our religion; our preferred denomination is liberalism.”[28] This proud American Jewish righteousness explained the anomaly that Milton Himmelfarb identified in his classic 1973 statement, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.”[29] More pointedly, the NPR humorist Peter Sagal quips: “What is it about being rich and white that American Jews don’t understand?”[30]
For decades, many American Jews have insisted that “Judaism is liberalism and liberalism is Judaism.” More recently, it’s been wrapped in the rhetoric of Tikkun Olam, healing the world. The Reform Rabbi and social activist, David Saperstein, calls Tikkun Olam “the most common organizing principle of Jewish identity”[31] – and many agree.
But this popular equation is misleading. As the Jewish scholar and ethicist Byron Sherwin noted, “The secular morality that many contemporary Jews identify with Judaism has little to do with the faith of their ancestors. It may be the ethics of groups of Jews but it is not the ethics of Judaism.”[32] Many highly assimilated American Jews have abandoned Jewish tradition but not traditional Jewish liberalism. In fact, according to the historian Deborah Dash Moore, “When conflict occurs between historical Jewish responses and American values, [the liberal] Jewish civil religion tends to accommodate to the American.”[33] The latest surveys show that the more religious and traditional you are, even moderately so, the less likely you are to embrace the full American Jewish liberal/Tikkun Olam package.[34]
A mixed symbol of this success is that Jews went from being seen as members of “the Jewish race” to being “white folk” enjoying “white privilege.” This meant that while there were quotas for Jewish students at universities until the 1940s, in the 1970s those same Jews did not merit “minority” status in affirmative action assessments, despite being a statistical minority which had suffered discrimination. By the twenty-first century, in a backhanded-compliment – or more accurately a slap-that-somehow-salutes -- Jews were targeted on “woke” campuses as oppressors, not the oppressed, because of their “whiteness” and “wealth.”
Most American Jews also increasingly accepted the popular claim advanced by many in the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements, blurring Judaism and liberalism. That is why the politically conservative commentator Richard Brookhiser has snapped that the only difference between Reform Judaism and Democratic politics is the holidays.[35]
Steven M. Cohen and the late Charles Liebman explained American Jews’ exceptional open-mindedness and cosmopolitanism as an expression of Jews’ “minority group interests” and their “religious modernism.” This mix of motivations, the two sociologists argued, helps explain the way American Jews are liberal, with the emphasis on “church-state separation (school prayer), social codes (largely issues relating to sex), and domestic spending.”[36]
Many commentators like to frame this ideological stance as either a heroic or naive Jewish refusal to vote their interests – with “their” “interests” defined by economics. The political scientist Kenneth Wald argues that Jews vote against their class interests because they are voting for something more profound: their equal billing. According to this, Jews are acting on “rational self-interest,” but a political, existential one not an economic one.[37] The neoconservative intellectual Irving Kristol was blunter in 1999, bemoaning “the Political Stupidity of the Jews.”[38]
Still, it is a mistake to equate the American Jewish liberalism of 2020 with that of 1932. American Jewry has evolved, as has liberalism itself. This development can be summarized by considering three generations of American Jewish liberalism.
American Jewish Liberalism Evolves in Three Stages
The first generation is what we could call Bourgeois Bolsheviks. The Eastern European immigrants and their children came to the New World with much Old World baggage… Tradition! These ambitious American Jewish urban pioneers also imported much of the socialist idealism and labor unionist values that were roiling Europe at the time. As they worked like dogs and dreamed of advancing their children thanks to the secret ingredient of American success — an education —they instinctively looked left politically.
This first mass American Jewish dream involved advancing individually and families, while still supporting the broader radical communal pitch. Theirs was the politics of the ILGWU and the ACWU (the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union), of the AFL and the CIO (the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations). They were the ones who squabbled over European politics and Communist doctrine so intensely that in the 1980s there were housing co-op boards in New York still divided over who broke with Stalin too early or too late in the 1950s.
Many but not all of the children and grandchildren of these immigrant workers “made it.” Although most didn’t become millionaires, they were the first generation of American Jews to be so disproportionately well-educated, white collar, and well-off. These were the Jews who earned like Episcopalians but voted like Puerto Ricans. These Yuppies with a Conscience remembered their parents’ struggles and thanked Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal for giving their families a new lease on life. Many of them were also Rainy Day Jews, anxious to be men and women publicly on the streets and increasingly diluting their traditional practices privately at home. Nevertheless, when they or their people were under attack, they mobilized.
These Jews internalized the lessons, first of the Czarist oppression, then of the Holocaust, that a society is only as free as its most downtrodden members, be they Jews, blacks, or the poor. American Jews developed a keen instinct for detecting the bully and bigot. What looked like (and was often framed as) an altruistic concern for others, was also a form of self-defense, both economically and politically.
Today, many Jews live like Yuppies and vote like hipsters. While many have a social conscience linked to their Judaism and the “tikkun olam” label, most are increasingly disconnected from their immigrant past and Jewish tradition. The members of this third generation, no longer Bourgeois Bolsheviks, no longer Yuppies with a Conscience, are open-spirited freedom-from-ers — deeply, proudly American, although very decidedly Not-Christians. Taking their cue from British Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between “freedom to” (positive freedoms to build, contribute, create) and “freedom from” (negative freedom from restrictions and constraints), they most fear the “no” while being open to different “yeses.” They have inherited from their understanding of their past and absorbed from postmodern culture a fear of restrictions, commitments, and norms imposed from the outside, especially by government or religion. They want freedom from traditional inhibitions and from legal restrictions against pre-marital sex, divorce, abortion, homosexuality. They want as open a market in lifestyle as the Republicans demand in business. (They are also more open to gun control and higher taxes than their Republican peers, but their essential orientation is towards individual prerogative, not authority. They like the idea of Big Government—not a Big Brother.) From the 1970s until Donald Trump’s polarizing presidency, the test case of loyalty and defining issue was fighting for a woman’s right to choose.
To understand this process, from Bolshevik to bourgeois, generation after generation, it helps to understand the fears that united American Jews, the scares that glued them together as what sociologists call a negative reference group. Beyond what they loved, it is important to note whom they hated. Originally it was the Czar. Then it was the Bosses. Finally, it was the Republicans: the Evangelicals and the Reaganites in the Eighties; the Corporate Bushies and the Tea Party more recently; and now Donald Trump. Beyond that, ever since the 1930s the shadow of Hitler and Nazism has united Jews, as shown by how quick they are to compare many far more innocuous threats to Nazism. With this unconscious communal defense mechanism implanted deep in their DNA, most Jews look like suburban Americans but worry like ghetto Jews.
Clearly, at the core of American Jewish identity, generation after generation, is the affirmation “I am not Christian.” That otherness expresses itself in the informal communal Christmas Eve and Christmas Day traditions of eating Chinese food, going to suddenly available Standing-Room-Only Broadway shows, and volunteering in understaffed hospitals. It expresses itself in a deep aversion to Jews for Jesus, even among highly assimilated Jews. And it expresses itself in a non-Christian, and today specifically non-Evangelical Christian, political agenda.
Israelis should take particular interest in the glaring contrast between the world’s two largest Jewish communities: American Jews protect their Jewish selves by pushing the government to champion individualism and remain aloof from “religious matters,” while Israeli Jews affirm their Jewish selves when the government champions Jewish communalism and becomes enmeshed in “religious matters.”
Even as a fierce sense of survivalism and Zionism bonds Israeli and American Jews, two very different politics have developed in their respective countries. Ultimately, most American Jews are Isaiahans, moved by the prophetic teachings, including the harsh critiques of power, particularism, and the status quo. Israeli Jews are Davidians, following the realpolitik of the kings, especially David, who was pious, poetic and principled—but ready to use force when necessary.
Lawrence Fuchs, an immigration scholar, wrote about American Jewish political identity: “Zedakeh, Torah, and this-worldliness have, along with the insecurity of the group, all promoted political liberalism among Jews in our time. Their liberalism and internationalism have favorably disposed them to a Democratic choice in recent presidential elections and largely explain the resistance of Jews to class politics.”[39] A scholar skeptical about this argument, Kenneth Wald, wrote: “American Jews seem to have foregrounded only those aspects of the tradition that comport with liberal values, suggesting that theology is not the cause but a consequence of other factors peculiar to the American Jewish experience.”[40]
Many of the “why-do-Jews-vote-liberal-hate-Trump-and-confuse-Judaism-with-liberalism” questions are simplistic and static. They treat “Jews,” “liberalism,” the “Democratic Party,” as one-dimensional and unchanging. Beyond appreciating the diversity of views within the various communities and ideologies, we need to understand the dynamics as more complex. “Liberalism” is not a suit that Jews wear because “it fits.” Part of the reason American liberalism and American Judaism fit so well is because Jews helped customize both, and made the two mesh together. The great prominence of Jews in the civil rights, feminist, and gay rights revolutions of the 1960s, and on the more cosmopolitan side in the Culture Wars since then, have fundamentally changed Judaism, liberalism, and America. Just how that occurred and what that means for Jews, liberals, and Americans is beyond the scope of this paper. But American Jewish history must be more than tracking the great successes of American Jewry’s superstars while assessing the blessings and curses of the kind of welcome mat America laid out for the Jews. The history of the Jews in America is ultimately about the historical impact of the Jews on America – and the historical impact of America on the Jews – individually and collectively.
PART III: Jewish Fears and Furies in 2016 and 2020
From Joy to Oy in 2016: How What Should Have Been the Greatest Presidential campaign for Jews became the Scariest
America’s 2016 presidential campaign should have been a high point of Jewish history, especially in Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and even Western European terms. The looming ascension into First Familyhood of either Jared Kushner or Marc Mezvinsky was the least of it. Not only did both major party nominees compete about who was more pro-Israel, both candidates relied heavily on Jewish advisers, Jewish donors, Jewish friends, all while courting the Jewish vote intensely. From afar, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would have been deemed “Jewish” not “goyish” in the comedian Lenny Bruce’s classic riff revealing just how much Jews shaped modern American culture. In fact, both had marched in the Israel Day Parade – repeatedly.
Love him or hate him, but a real estate mogul from Queens, New York, who built his reputation building flashy buildings in Manhattan, had a familiarity with Jews and Jewish culture his German grandfather certainly lacked. In fact, Donald Trump felt so comfortable with Jews that when he spoke at a Republican Jewish Coalition forum in December, 2015, his ethnic-based “shtick” was not politically correct but clearly a reflection of what goes on in many a Fifth-Avenue board room among old friends comfortable enough to “kibitz” with one another about each other’s alleged ethnic tics. “You just like me because my daughter happens to be Jewish,” Trump said as he began – then complained as a true insider by griping: “the only bad news is I can’t get her on Saturday.” He offended some by saying, “Look, I’m a negotiator like you folks, we’re negotiators,” but those who liked him got the message – he’s one of us.[41]
Love her or hate her, but an Ivy League liberal from Wellesley and Yale, who built her network of friends among the Northeast meritocracy had a familiarity with Jews and Jewish culture her suburban Midwestern parents certainly lacked. In fact, Hillary Clinton felt so comfortable with Jews she often celebrated Sara Ehrman as her mentor – despite the fact that Ehrman strongly urged Hillary not to marry Bill in 1974 – or perhaps thanks to such candor. Like many friends of the Clintons, Ehrman was not just Jewish but proudly so, describing herself as “first a Jew, second a Democrat, and above all a feminist.”[42] In her speeches to Jewish groups, Hillary could “kibitz” about Yitzhak Rabin never forgiving her “for banishing him to the White House balcony when he wanted to smoke,” while smoothly ending with “divrei Torah” of sorts quoting Mordechai, Esther and Elie Wiesel.[43]
True, neither candidate sang “Dayenu,” while helping kids bake matzah in Brooklyn, as Trump’s rival for the nomination Senator Ted Cruz of Texas did.[44] And it was Ted Cruz who said Donald Trump “embodies New York values,” which to many Jews sounded like code words describing them rudely, especially when Cruz clarified “that the values in New York City are socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage [and] focus around money and the media.”[45] Such lunacy was typical of the 2016 campaign: Donald Trump, the candidate some suspected of being anti-Semitic, was also subject to anti-Semitic attacks by a pro-Israel, philo-Semitic candidate.
Still, the only thing more extraordinary than both Clinton’s and Trump’s Jewish literacy, familiarity, and intimacy was how ordinary it all appeared to Americans, both Jewish and non-Jewish.
Beyond that, from Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper on CNN to Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court to Senator Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail, American Jews were organically, comfortably, a part of American politics and this election in particular. No longer that People that Dwells Apart, Jews in America were a People who Feel at Home.
Yet rather than celebrate this unprecedented moment in Jewish history, many American Jews were on edge even before the campaign began. Although most Jews supported her enthusiastically, Hillary Clinton’s Republican Jewish opponents used her long but somewhat complex relationship with Israel and the Palestinians to stir ongoing fears of a Democratic drift away from the Jewish State. And, far more profoundly, despite his pride in having been Grand Marshal of the Israel Day Parade, Donald Trump proved doubly disturbing to the vast majority of American Jews.
For starters, Trump’s bullying persona and bigoted demagoguery were almost perfectly engineered to stir deep-seated American Jewish anxieties about authoritarian despots. Even worse, a small number of his supporters used his words, his example, and the Toxic Shock Politicking of the Internet, to unleash the largest and ugliest wave of anti-Semitism in the public sphere since Father Charles Coughlin’s anti-Semitic radio diatribes in the 1930s.
The Three Hillary Clintons Regarding Israel: Each Tells a Story
Hillary Clinton articulated a passionate, classically pro-Israel position during the Democratic primary season. She denounced the boycott movement against Israel, charming media mogul Haim Saban and other pro-Israel, mega-generous Democratic donors. She condemned terrorism, Hamas, and her rival Bernie Sanders’ ambivalence regarding Israel’s “disproportionate” self-defense operations in Gaza. During one debate, Clinton’s counterpunch balanced out Sanders’ critique of Israel’s firepower by offering context. Invoking “25 years” of experience with “Israeli officials,” she said: “They do not invite the rockets raining down on their towns and villages.” She blasted “a constant incitement by Hamas aided and abetted by Iran against Israel.” She reminded Sanders and his young, twenty-something fans that “Israel left Gaza. … They turned the keys over to the Palestinian people. … And what happened? Hamas took over Gaza” creating “a terrorist haven.” And, most boldly, rejecting the claims that Israel undermined the two-state solution, she added “if Yasser Arafat had agreed with my husband at Camp David in the late 1990s to the offer then prime minister [Ehud] Barak put on the table, we would have had a Palestinian state for 15 years.”[46]
Nevertheless, some pro-Israel advocates worried, especially considering her email exchanges with Clinton consigliere Sidney Blumenthal. Secretary of State Clinton’s tolerance for the anti-Israel venom of Blumenthal and his son Max unsettled them. During her tenure at the State Department, she relied on the elder Blumenthal, a Clinton loyalist whose son wrote a mean-spirited, anti-Zionist screed, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. The elder Blumenthal shared with Secretary Clinton articles that ultimately became part of Blumenthal junior’s 410-page rant against Israel’s alleged “colonialism” and “racism,” replete with the expected Holocaust analogies.
Blumenthal’s looming presence reminded pro-Israel critics that when she was America’s polarizing first lady in the 1990s, Hillary Rodham Clinton was considered to be among the most skeptical of Clintonites regarding Israel and the most pro-Palestinian, far to her husband’s “left” on the issue. The doubts about her swelled in November 1999, when she visited Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha, in the West Bank. During one speech, Suha Arafat accused “Israeli forces” of spraying “poison gas,” causing “an increase in cancer cases among Palestinian women and children.” Throughout the tirade, with Arafat’s words translated simultaneously, Clinton kept smiling. After the speech, Clinton kissed Arafat warmly on the cheek. Critics charged that the first lady had shown her true colors, implicitly endorsing this modern blood libel.
The next day Clinton called the remarks “inflammatory and outrageous.” She said that the translation she heard had been milder than Suha’s actual Arabic words. Later, while running for Senate in New York, Clinton dismissed critics, saying, that in the Middle East, “a kiss is a handshake.” In fairness, Hillary Clinton’s plastic smile and scripted kiss may have reflected a first lady on automatic pilot, not an Israel-hater. But the story exploded because it reflected fears stemming from earlier, combustible, statements she had made about Palestinians. Many feared that she did not share her husband’s instinctive love for Israel.
As a senator representing New York starting in 2001, Hillary Clinton became Israel’s biggest fan – a conversion some dismissed as a transparent homage to the Jewish vote in New York. She decried Yasser Arafat’s war of terrorism against the Oslo peace process, in which Palestinians killed hundreds of Jews, including some New Yorkers. Most movingly, in February 2002, while visiting Israel, Senator Clinton met Yochai Porat, a 26-year-old paramedic. Days later, on March 3, a Palestinian sniper murdered Porat and nine others at an army roadblock on the Ramallah-Nablus road. Porat, characteristically, was tending to the wounded when shot. Three years later, visiting Israel again, Senator Clinton met Porat’s family, quietly consoling them. His family asked her to help Magen David Adom (MDA) in its quest for international recognition. To her credit—and contrary to the Clinton reputation for milking every honest sentiment—she launched an ultimately successful campaign to persuade the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to admit MDA, without showboating her support for Porat’s grieving family.[47]
As secretary of state, Clinton admitted that she was “often the designated yeller”[48] in the administration’s many confrontations with Benjamin Netanyahu. She especially earned that title in 2010, when she berated Israel’s prime minister for 45 minutes, accusing him of “humiliating the United States of America”[49] after a Jerusalem municipal official announced tenders to expand a Jerusalem residential neighborhood in “occupied territory” during Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel. Subsequently, Secretary Clinton accused Israel of “lacking empathy for oppressed Palestinians”[50]After leaving the State Department, she supported the deal with Iran that lifted the sanctions she helped impose while in office, in exchange for Iran promising to dismantle much of its nuclear capability for a period of 10 to 15 years. Netanyahu and most Israel’s feared the deal as toothless in the long run regarding Iran’s rush to go nuclear and disastrous in the short term because of all the money Iran received from the US and was pumping into Hezbollah and Hamas.
Bernie Sanders as a Blame-Israel-Firster, but not Anti-Israel
The Sanders-Clinton clash in the Democratic primaries mapped out the contours of the Israel debate among mainstream Democrats in 2016. Then, as now during his second run for the presidency, Sanders belongs to the Tough Love faction: pro-Israel in theory but fed up with “Netanyahu’s Israel” in fact -- and strikingly insensitive to what triggers Jewish alarm bells. These Blame Israel Firsters don’t want to see the Jewish state destroyed but also don’t want to see how their one-sided finger-pointing threatens the Jewish state or upsets many American Jews. Taking a tough-love approach, they allege Israel is too quick to attack and too slow to make peace. They emphasize, as Sanders does, the destruction in Gaza, overlooking what triggered it—both immediate causes like Kassam rockets and the ultimate cause, Palestinian rejectionism, incitement, and terrorism.
Still, although some of Sanders’ supporters were “anti-Israel,” and the appointment of a pro-boycott activist like Prof. Cornell West to the Democratic platform committee was a hostile act, Sanders is not “anti-Israel.” With so many people worldwide happily embracing the phrase, sophisticated supporters of Israel understand that it doesn’t help to clump Blame-Israel-Firsters like Sanders with those who actively seek Israel’s destruction. The fact, however, that American Jewry’s first, truly serious presidential candidate is so tough on the Jewish state, will, however, make for interesting chapters in future books about the American Jewish psyche and the complex relationship American Jews have with Israel and Zionism.
Sanders’ churlish and tone-deaf approach to Israel – exemplified in 2019 when he appointed the pro-BDS, anti-Zionist Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour as a “campaign surrogate” and endorsed efforts to make American aid to Israel contingent on Israel ending “the occupation” -- also reflected the crisis in relations between Progressives and Zionists. Once, the mostly-pro-Israel Republican Party was the home of the small minority of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists. Today, the still-mostly-pro-Israel Democratic Party is the home of a growing minority of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists - and a larger group of Fellow Travelers, enabling this enmity rather than confronting it.
Beyond his political critique of Israeli policy toward Palestinians, Sanders had his own identity ambivalences and baggage. He looked the part of the typical left-leaning, wild-haired, heavily-accented Brooklyn Jew – and had even volunteered on a kibbutz when young. Yet, early in the 2016 campaign, Sanders called himself “the son of a Polish immigrant.”[51] When his father Eli Sanders emigrated from a village south of Krakow in 1921, most Poles didn’t think of the elder Sanders as a Pole, nor did most Jews think of themselves as such. It seemed like a weak attempt at hiding his obvious Jewishness.
More surprisingly, this fiery candidate turned uncharacteristically mousy when he faced anti-Semitism on the campaign trail. At one candidate forum, a questioner asked about how “the Zionist Jews ... run the Federal Reserve ... Wall Street.” Sanders blandly chided the questioner. He then implicitly justified the ugliness by quickly adding, “I also believe that we have got to pay attention to the needs of the Palestinian people.”[52] Sanders’ response connected the dots between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and reflected a fear that simply denouncing anti-Semitism risked progressive votes.
Sanders quickly realized – or was told -- that 2016 is not 1966, when downplaying your ethnicity was the all-American thing to do. He tried moving beyond his “Polish immigrant” fumble by appearing on Saturday Night Live with his fellow Brooklyn boy made good, Larry David. In an opening sketch on “the boat” taking immigrants to America, Sanders introduced himself as “Bernie Sanderswitsky.” He then added: “We are going to change it when we get to America so it doesn’t sound so Jewish.”
“Yeah, that will trick them,” Larry David replied.[53]
Sanders’s appearance was clever. But with the 24/7 news cycle constantly recycling your gravest errors, it often was hard for candidates to move on.
Four years later, the spread of anti-Semitism and a growing backlash made it impossible for Sanders to deny its toxicity or his Jewishness. Writing in a small leftist journal, Jewish Currents, Sanders now called himself “a proud Jewish American.” He identified the fight against anti-Semitism narrowly, as a fight against “a dangerous political ideology that targets Jews and anyone who does not fit a narrow vision of a whites-only America.” But he also went broad, essentially equating the fight against anti-Semitism with the fight for “progressive values.” And, of course, he blamed Donald Trump, saying Trump’s “own words helped inspire the worst act of anti-Semitic violence in American history,” the Pittsburgh Tree of Life massacre.[54]
Obama’ Hostility to Netanyahu and Iran Deal Welcomes Anti-Israel Democrats
The more fundamental – and worrying -- shift to do with Democrats and Israel, shaped, in particular, by Barack Obama’s complicated relationship toward Israel, the pro-Israel community, and Jews. Obama talked the pro-Israel talk – sounding more unreservedly Zionist than Sanders. “It would be a moral failing on my part if we did not stand up firmly, steadfastly not just on behalf of Israel’s right to exist, but its right to thrive and prosper,” the President said.[55] Obama walked the walk, providing more than $20.5 billion in military assistance to Israel while defending Israel most of the time in most international forums. Like Bill Clinton, Obama was so culturally comfortable with Jewish liberalism and so friendly with Jews that he challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about what being “pro-Israel” means and what are the defining Jewish values. Echoing earlier remarks that he was pro-Israel but not pro-Likud, Obama justified his “tough love” on settlements and Iran, insisting that “to paper over difficult questions, particularly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” is “not a true measure of friendship.[56]
More boldly, in 2015, Obama spoke effusively at Adas Israel, the Washington synagogue dedicated by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1876—the first time a sitting president had attended a synagogue service. Obama declared himself “an honorary member of the tribe” and equated Judaism with liberalism. As “a community, American Jews have helped make our union more perfect.” Obama said. “The story of Exodus inspired oppressed people around the world in their own struggles for civil rights. From the founding members of the NAACP to a freedom summer in Mississippi, from women’s rights to gay rights to workers' rights, Jews took the heart of Biblical edict that we must not oppress a stranger, having been strangers once ourselves.” Chemi Shalev of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz wryly noted that the President of the United States “made no mention of the Israeli prime minister, but his essential message to American Jews was nonetheless stark: I represent your core values far better than the elected leader of Israel.”[57]
By contrast, Hillary Clinton on the 2016 campaign trail embraced her husband’s approach, which understands that Israelis respond better to “love love” than to tough love. Most Democrats envision the same two-state solution, following the (Bill) Clinton parameters; replicating the 1967 borders, with some land swaps. But these Two-Staters acknowledge that while Israel may err occasionally, the Palestinians have behaved abominably. Rather than being blindly “evenhanded”—which often means bashing Israel and excusing the Palestinians—they make moral distinctions. They respect Palestinians enough to hold them responsible for repeatedly sabotaging the chances for peace, especially while the Oslo process endured. Ultimately, the fight over Israel is a fight about foreign policy and America’s role in the world. From the candies thrown in Gaza to celebrate 9/11 to Iran’s targeting of “Big Satan” and “Little Satan,” the Islamist world keeps proving that Anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism are overlapping phenomena.
Sanders’ racked up an impressive string of Jewish “firsts” in campaigning. He became the first Jew to win a state primary and the Jew who won the most primary votes in history. Nevertheless, pollsters estimated that Clinton won two-thirds of the Jewish vote. She also reassured Jewish Democrats that she would remain “pro-Israel” as president and that being pro-Israel remained the consensus position in the Democratic Party mainstream.
Still, while no watershed, 2016 was one more step in distancing the Democratic Party from its traditional role as the most Israel-friendly of America’s two major political parties. The bipartisan consensus in favor of Israel remained. But there were cracks in the consensus, which were more visible and numerous on the Democratic side. Sanders’ candidacy multiplied these fissures – and legitimized them. Ira Sheskin’s work in Detroit found that while 23 percent of Jewish Republicans are extremely attached to Israel with 48 percent very attached, 20 percent of Jewish Democrats are extremely attached to Israel but only 26 percent are very attached.[58]
Support for Israel as a Prop for Liberals and a Propeller for Pro-Trumpers
Although American Jews have long been motivated by domestic concerns rather than Israel issues in the voting booth, the 2016 campaign intensified another worrying trend for Israel supporters. Once, at least some Jews would find themselves propelled toward the more pro-Israel candidate, especially at the start of a campaign. But, increasingly, many pro-Israel Jewish voters reversed the process, reducing a candidate’s pro-Israel position to a prop, yet another reason to support the candidate but not the main reason. In such an environment, many Jewish voters – especially liberals -- started reasoning backward. If they liked a candidate and liked Israel, they justified the candidate’s Israel policy as just what Israel needed. And if they disliked a candidate who liked Israel, they started either distancing themselves from Israel – or from that candidate’s approach to Israel. For example, in 2015, most pro-Israel voters who liked Obama, justified his support for the Iran treaty and rejection of settlements as just what Israel needed. A year later, most of those voters, disdained Trump and declared pro-Israel policies most Israelis loved as both insincere gestures and unproductive.[59]
In short, in an age of polarizing partisanship, more and more Americans, including Jews, were misapplying the transitive property from math to politics. In math, if a=b and b=c than a = c. But in politics, if I like b and b dislikes c I need not dislike c – nor, if I hate b and b loves c, I need not hate c too.
The late New York mayor Ed Koch’s wise witticism was forgotten. When running for governor, he told supporters: “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist!”[60] Democrats and Republicans were treating candidates as either all-good or evil. Inconvenient stances on any one particular issue would be ignored or ironed over to perpetuate the package of the perfect candidate opposed by a perfectly awful opposition.
Republicans Start Positioning Themselves as the pro-Israel Party under George W. Bush
The minority of Jewish Republicans often approached their Israel support as a propeller not a prop – their commitment to Israel frequently propelled them toward the GOP, starting with the George W. Bush administration. By 2004, American Jews knew that George W. Bush was far friendlier to Israel than his father had been. After the terrorist atrocity of September 11, 2001, Bush Junior applied the “Bush Doctrine” to Israel: “Terror must be stopped. No nation can negotiate with terrorists.”[61] Nevertheless, Bush’s opponent that year, John Kerry, won 76 percent of the Jewish vote. Ultimately, most Jews were more concerned by Bush’s rightwing domestic policies, values, and allies – and appalled by the Iraq War -- than impressed by his pro-Israel stance.
During Bush’s two terms, Republicans started positioning themselves as more passionately pro-Israel than Democrats, whose radical faction was increasingly critical of Israel. While the label “anti-Israel” rarely applied to any mainstream American politicians, more Democratic politicians were open to a “tough love” position, willing to squeeze Israel to force it to stop building settlements and consider withdrawing from the territories. More Republican politicians took an unconditional “love love” approach, and tried turning support for Israel from a bipartisan tenet into a wedge issue.
And, despite Ariel Sharon’s sweeping disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and Ehud Olmert’s generous concessions to Mahmoud Abbas that resulted in yet another round of Palestinian “nos,” liberal Jews kept grumbling about Israel. The transitive property was being misapplied: the more ardently George W. Bush embraced Israel, the more some Jews – and some Democrats -- recoiled instinctively from Israel because they hated George W. Bush.
Obama: Far more Pro-Jewish than Pro-Israel
These nuanced differences had little impact on the Jewish vote in 2008. Despite the worries of pro-Israel advocates about Barack Obama’s own commitment to Israel and his long ties to his anti-Semitic, anti-Israel preacher Jeremiah Wright, prominent Jews vouched for him, led by those from Obama’s home base in Chicago. Most Jews had soured on George W. Bush, long before the stock market crashed just weeks before the election -- perhaps the greatest domestic disruption so close to a presidential election in American history. The Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, was a strong supporter of Israel. By any standards, McCain’s record of friendship for Israel was far deeper than Obama’s.
But the Jewish support for Obama was as much cultural as political. Comedian Sarah Silverman’s “The Great Schlep” video went viral, mocking elderly Jews who doubted Obama and encouraging their grandchildren to insist that Jews vote Democratic. “If Barack Obama doesn’t become the next president of the United States, I’m gonna blame the Jews … I am,” Silverman said, in one of her less vulgar riffs. “And I know you’re saying like, ‘Oh my God, Sarah, I can’t believe you’re saying this. Jews are the most liberal, scrappy, civil rights-y people there are.’ Yes, that’s true. But you’re forgetting a whole large group of Jews that are not that way, and they go by several aliases. Nana, Papa, Zaide, Bubbe, plain old grandma and grandpa. These are the people who vote in Florida. And the Florida vote can make or break an election. If you don’t think that’s true, why don’t you think back to two elections ago when a little man named Al Gore got fucked by Florida.”[62]
The comedian Larry David emphasized the Jewish fear of Evangelicals, declaring at Dartmouth College: “Candidates who do not believe in evolution are not my cup of tea.”[63]
On Election Day, 78 percent of the Jews voted for Obama.[64]
The Republican campaign made some inroads in 2012. Television ads had Jews who voted for Obama in 2008 regretting their choice. Billboards in Jewish areas cried out “Obama: Oy vay!” Barack Obama’s share of the Jewish vote did drop nine percentage points, to 69 percent[65]—after a term marked by frequent clashes with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It became clear that most Orthodox Jews were now Republicans and that the less Jewishly affiliated you were, the more liberal and Democratic you became.
Yet once again, the long-predicted great Jewish realignment did not occur. More and more Republicans, Jewish and otherwise, marveled at the denunciations of Israel issuing from the Left, about Obama’s willingness to reach out to Iran, at the tensions between blacks and Jews, and wondered, as Irving Kristol had in 1999, about the Jews’ “political stupidity.”[66]
Obama’s poll ratings among Jews did drop further after the divisive debate over the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran’s quest to go nuclear.[67] But then, as Obama’s poll ratings improved overall, so did his standing with the Jews. Polls, of course, are far more volatile and less consequential than the ballot box. Still, Obama’s final approval rating among Jews averaged 13 points higher than that among the population as a whole.[68]
The Jews most supportive of Obama included the liberal, nonreligious, and highly educated. Jews continue to be nearly twice as liberal as most Americans— 41 percent versus 23 percent— and 85 percent of Jewish liberals approved of Obama.[69] Half of all Jews defined themselves as “not religious,” while only 31 percent of the general population did so; 36 percent of Jews had done postgraduate work, nearly three times the rate for all Americans.[70]
Obama’s Jewish critics were passionate. In 2014, the conservative columnist and blogger Ben Shapiro wrote a column condemning “the Jew-hating Obama Administration,” charging “Jewish blood is cheap to this administration.”[71] During the angry debate over the Iran deal, others accused Obama of “dog whistling,” singling out Jewish critics and emphasizing Israel’s opposition as a way of tarring critics as self-involved Jews and Zionists. The Brandeis University historian Jonathan Sarna speculated that Obama and some of his aides “have not been as sensitive as they should be to the ease with which a stray comment can give aid and comfort to those who believe in Jewish power, dual loyalty, and a whole variety of other anti-Semitic tropes.”[72] But, unlike Shapiro and other critics, Sarna stopped there.
It was hard to accuse Obama of being anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, or anti-Zionist. Many Jewish supporters loved toasting him as “the first Jewish president.”[73] The Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg said, “This president has a great Jewish soul.”[74] Obama denounced anti-Semitism by saying “I, too, am a Jew” to show solidarity.[75] He hosted Passover seders at the White House. He was the first president to speak at Israel’s embassy in Washington. He visited Buchenwald and Israel, making sure to honor Theodor Herzl as a way of legitimizing Zionism. And Obama spoke repeatedly about “the deep affinities that I feel for the Israeli people and for the Jewish people.”[76]
Nevertheless, being so pro-Jewish and beloved by Jews did not stop Obama from becoming a caustic critic of the Israeli prime minister, many Israeli policies, and Israel’s continuing presence in the West Bank. The result was an occasionally testy relationship with Israel and many Jews. That was to be expected. More surprising, however, was how loyal the liberal Jewish majority remained to Obama, thanks to Obama’s support for liberal agenda items such as gay marriage, abortion, and national health care, which Obama’s Republican opponents opposed passionately.
At a moment when many Americans were reasoning backwards, finetuning their issue stances based on which candidate or party they supported, many Jews were so pro-Obama they rationalized his positions regarding Israel as in Israel’s best interests, especially regarding the Iran deal. [77]
During the harsh fights over the Iran nuclear agreement, which most Israelis opposed but most American Jews apparently supported, the politicized transitive property seemed to kick in. More and more pro-Obama Jews supported Obama’s approach to Israel and Iran because they supported Obama. Forced to trust either their president’s reading of Israel’s security or most Israelis’ reading of Israel’s security, most trusted Obama. A Los Angeles Jewish Journal poll found 48 percent of American Jews supporting the deal, with 28 percent opposing it.[78] The left-leaning J Street ran a poll finding 60 percent of American Jews supporting it.[79] Bar Ilan University Professor Jonathan Rynhold’s research made it clear: “The strongest indicator of [American Jewish] support for the agreement was support for President Obama.”[80]
The Trump Trauma Scares Most Jews
While liberal American Jews’ great faith in Obama disturbed many Israelis, Donald Trump’s campaign proved to be the most anxiety-provoking campaign for the most Jews in American history. On one level, this discomfort was surprising. After all, most Republican candidates including Trump kept competing among themselves to prove just how pro-Israel, pro-Benjamin Netanyahu, and anti-terrorism they could be.
During one debate, the conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted: “How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?” Coulter missed how important Israel’s defense and the symbolism of standing with Israel had become to many Republican voters, especially Evangelical Christians, not just Jews.
Lacking any political or foreign policy experience, Trump was reduced to proving his pro-Israel bona fides by boasting about his grand marshalship of the Israel Day parade and his friendship with Netanyahu. He also had no problem bashing Obama’s pressure on Israel, raising the conundrum that was so bedeviling many Republicans – with a key word that would emerge years later in Trump’s discussions about Israel too: “The thing I don’t understand is,” Trump said, “in my opinion, Barack Obama has been tremendously disloyal to Israel [emphasis added]. Tremendously. And yet my Jewish friends go out and have fundraisers for him.”[81]
Trump’s question was being answered not only by Jews but by Republican voters too. Surveys showed the continuing Jewish loyalty to liberal values and the Democratic Party most of all. Surveys also showed that in 2018 only four percent of Jewish voters put Israel as the first or second most important issue – only ten percent of Orthodox voters. Instead, 43 percent prioritized health care, 28 percent prioritized gun violence, and 21 percent Social Security and Medicare.[82] For those who cared about the Jewish state intensely, Israel, which was twelfth on the list in what was a domestic-focused election, was a compelling issue, but they remained a minority.
Despite his emphasis on loyalty, and payback, early in the campaign, Trump’s characteristically self-promoting comments that he is the kind of honest broker who could impose “a deal” on the Israelis and Palestinians unnerved Israelis. Eventually, he reassured them of his enthusiastic support. His two key Middle East aides were two of his Jewish lawyers, adding to the strangeness of it all. At the same time, his aggressive denunciation of terrorism and his sweeping calls to limit Muslim immigration until the United States could control its borders thrilled most right-wing Jews.
Trump’s comments and his comrades triggered a broader cultural and political distaste within the liberal Jewish community. Long before Trump tweeted out a hastily recycled attack on Hillary Clinton’s supposed corruption, using a six-pointed star against a background of money, his many Jewish detractors were convinced he was a closet anti-Semite stirring up the uncloseted ones. And just as much as Trump’s running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, reassured Evangelicals, Pence’s ardent social conservatism alienated most American Jews.
Most disturbing, some of Trump’s most extreme supporters in the blogosphere resorted to the crassest, ugliest anti-Semitic images and epithets to “flame” journalists and others with obvious Jewish last names who dared to criticize “The Donald,” or his wife. After Julia Ioffe profiled Melania Trump in GQ, one alt-right leader on the Daily Stormer website demanded: “Please go ahead and send her a tweet and let her know what you think of her dirty kike trickery. Make sure to identify her as a Jew working against White interests.”[83] An internet barrage followed. For the crime of defending Democrats on Fox News, Julie Roginsky received Tweets like this: “Keep scribbling KIKE! Americans are taking the country back from the Israel First scum. INTO THE OVEN.”[84] And the online vitriol against the conservative anti-Trumper Bethany Mandel was so intense and so personal, she bought a gun to protect herself and her family.[85]
A classic exchange bringing together all these layered identities and clashing plotlines occurred in July, 2016, when the journalist Dana Schwartz wrote an open letter to her boss Jared Kushner, the owner of the New York Observer and Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Schwartz asked Kushner how he, as a Jew, could accept being used to mask the anti-Semitism of Trump and his supporters.[86] Kushner responded by declaring, “my father-in-law is not an anti-Semite.”[87] Kushner backed up the declaration—and his own Jewish street cred, his Jewish bona fides—by going into the heartbreaking stories of ghetto deportations, murder, and resistance in the woods with the Bielski brothers that constituted the Kushner family background.
In short, Kushner said, I know how to worry about Hitler too—and that’s not a problem with Donald Trump. The escalation from debating about whether a tweet Trump sent in 2016, in the middle of an American presidential campaign, was insensitive, to the Nazi annihilation of Novogrudok’s Jews more than seven decades earlier shows how the shadow of the Holocaust continues to loom over American Jewry and America, even in the twenty-first century.
The Great Lopsided Divide: Orthodox Trumpers versus Liberal Democrats
In a deeply polarized America, it was too easy to see American Jews as being completely divided too, although in lopsided numbers. One could characterize the small committed minority of pro-Trumpers as Davidian – putting their pro-Israel Jewish patriotism first – and the outraged Jewish majority of anti-Trumpers as Isaiahan – with their fury against Trump reinforcing their already-deeply-baked-in universalistic and social justice instincts.
A closer look, however, identifies six distinct groups among Jews. There was a small group of Jewish Never Trumpers, Jewish Republicans who detest Donald Trump, but could nevertheless applaud his pro-Israel stand. Someone like Bill Kristol, the founder and editor-at-large of the recently closed Weekly Standard, often blasted Trump, during and after the campaign. In the fall of 2017, for example, Kristol Tweeted: “The GOP tax bill's bringing out my inner socialist. The sex scandals are bringing out my inner feminist. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are bringing out my inner liberal. WHAT IS HAPPENING?”[88] Nevertheless, Krisol could also proclaim: “I support the moving of the [US] embassy to Jerusalem.”[89]
Similarly, Jonah Goldberg Tweeted that “Jerusalem was a Jewish capital roughly 1,000 years before Jesus was born and 1,500 years before Mohammad was born. #History.”[90] On KCRW’s “Left, Right and Center” podcast, David Frum acknowledged that: “The president's office of Israel is in West Jerusalem. You don't have to like that fact, it's just a fact, and foreign policy should be based on fact, and nothing good comes of pretending facts are not facts.”[91]
More typical among GOP-Jews were Orthodox Trumpers, or Always Israelites. Most were Orthodox in both senses of the word: Orthodox Jews who supported Donald Trump wholeheartedly and consistently. Some Russian Jews and business-oriented Jews joined him. For most Jewish pro-Trumpers, Trump’s support of Israel was a keystone to their support for the President. Orthodox Jewish Orthodox Trumpers, in particular, started with Trump’s ardent support from Israel, and enjoyed his alliance with America’s more culturally conservative and pro-business forces. They thanked their friend by overlooking -- and too-often excusing -- his ethical indiscretions, his bullying, his occasional infelicitous descriptions of Jews and Judaism.
Finally, there was also a small group of what we could call “still Republicans” – sticking with their Party out of loyalty to the institution or to its business or cultural agenda, despite their concerns with Trump. They reflect the partisanship of the moment – which has a long pedigree in American history. In 1896, when New York governor David B. Hill saw his Democratic Party nominate the radical populist William Jennings Bryan to run for president, Hill famously said: “I am a Democrat still, very still.”[92]
The anti-Trumpers divided into three groups: Herzl Jews, Harassed Jews, and Hostile “AsaJew” Jews.
Herzl Jews were already proud liberal Jews who as good Democrats and good Jews hated Trump – along with most Republicans -- and loved Israel. For them, Trump’s behavior and policies were despicable assaults on their Jewish identities and values as well as their American identities and values. The surge of authoritarian anti-Semitism they blamed on Trump reinforced their hatred of Trump and added to their anguish over “Bibi’s Israel,” which seemed to have peaked when Netanyahu addressed Congress in 2015 without an invitation from Barack Obama. It then only worsened amid the Bibi-Trump political love match.
A typical “Herzl Jew” was Bari Weiss, an op-ed writer for the New York Times. In her 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism, she describes herself as an involved, literate liberal Jew, committed both to liberalism and Zionism. Nevertheless, a crazed white supremacist’s murder of eleven fellow congregants in the Pittsburgh synagogue where she grew up, ended her “holiday from history.”[93]
Weiss is able to see modern anti-Semitism in three-dimensions, unlike most American Jews who “tend to be much more attuned to anti-Semitism when it comes from the political right.” But she also sees the presidential dimension to the problem, despite Trump’s pro-Israel actions. Weiss writes: “In the end, Trump’s incessant dog whistling is less significant than the larger charge of which he stands guilty: the systemic removal of what my colleague” – a Never Trumper – “Bret Stephens has called ‘the moral guardrails that keep bigotry down.’ Trump has done this by denigrating both the most heroic and the weakest people in our culture, by stoking angry mobs, by showing contempt for the rule of law and disdain for the very best of American traditions.”
Similarly, Rabbi Rick Jacobs attends AIPAC regularly and is famous for owning a second home in Jerusalem. He has long been a leader of the Zionist wing of the Reform movement and President of the Union of Reform Judaism. Naturally, he opposed Trump’s candidacy from the beginning. “If you want to be a candidate for the highest office in the world, you can’t be a person of hate and division like Donald Trump is,” Jacobs wrote in March, 2016, explaining why he walked out of the AIPAC Policy Conference when Trump walked on stage.[94]
Jacobs allowed his hatred of Trump to trump his love of Jerusalem when a New York Times reporter solicited his reaction to Trump’s decision to move America’s embassy to Jerusalem in December, 2017. “Jerusalem has always been the most delicate issue in every discussion about peace,” Jacobs said. “So we’re very concerned that the announcement will either delay or undermine the very, very important resuming of a serious peace process.”[95] The URJ’s formal statement on December 6, expressed “serious concern” that Trump’s recognition “may well undercut the Administration’s peace process efforts and risk destabilizing the region.”[96]
Predictably, many Israelis were furious. “We were taken aback by the official position of the URJ. We are a little concerned,” said Akiva Tor, head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Bureau for World Jewish Affairs and World Religions based in Jerusalem.[97] Many “Herzl Jews” among Jacobs’ colleagues were concerned too: “I want the Jewish world to know that [the URJ’s] position is not my position, nor does it reflect the views of multitudes of, perhaps most, Reform Jews,” Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch told his congregants at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan.[98]
“Now is not the right time?” Hirsch asked in his sermon, which he posted on YouTube. “Two-thousand years later and it is still not the right time?… There were critics who accused the civil rights movement of moving too quickly. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s response: ‘The time is always ripe to do what is right.’”
When 6000 Reform Jews gathered immediately after Trump’s announcement at their previously scheduled national convention, Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Florida, told the Jewish News Syndicate: “I heard many whispered and not-so-whispered conversations in the corridors of the URJ biennial…. An impressive number of rabbis and lay people support Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, even if Trump said it…Whatever Trump’s motives were for the proclamation, he spoke the truth.”[99]
Trying to quell the controversy, Jacobs delivered a sermon at the Biennial, backtracking. “Before this decision, we expressed our serious concern – never, never about the concept — but about the timing of these actions” — that is, absent a “broader strategy that enhances the two-state solution, he explained. “Now that the decision has been made, our movement stands in solidarity with this recognition. Jerusalem is, in fact, the capital of Israel. That is how it should and must be.”[100]
Two weeks later, on December 22, the URJ denounced the UN when it condemned Trump’s decision.[101]
This fight reflected some the Herzl Jews’ dilemmas. There was little tolerance among “the Resistance” opposing Trump for any deviations from the anti-Trump line. Still, sometimes, as hard as it was to praise Trump, it was even harder to condemn him.
More numerous than these Herzl Jews are what we might call “Harassed Jews.” They were among the 73 percent of American Jews who reported to the Pew Study researchers that the Holocaust is the number one factor in shaping their Jewish identities. Nevertheless, most are, ahem, “Americans First,” and often quite distant from Judaism. Bari Weiss’s New York Times colleague, Jonathan Weisman, took a very different approach to Judaism in his 2018 book (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in the Age of Trump than Weiss did in hers.
Until the 2016 campaign, Weisman was “largely disconnected from Jewish life and faith” – and proud of it. His Judaism and that of “millions of American Jews” was “easy.” It was “cafeteria-style: observe or don’t, join a synagogue or attend the occasional Jewish film festival, read Phillip Roth, eat bagels and babka, say ‘oy’ ironically. You could be Jewish by religion, Jewish by culture, Jewish by birth or identity – take your pick… We succeeded without apology but also struggled like everyone else. Anti-Semitism was in the past. The ‘Jewish Question’ was little worth mentioning.”[102]
Then, suddenly, during the Trump campaign of 2016, “it was. On my phone, on my computer, in my voice mail…. I got that sad cancer face from colleagues and friends – I’m so sorry about what you’re going through.” One re-tweet by Weisman of an article by Robert Kagan warning about Fascism had both of them – with Jewish-sounding names – targeted by “the Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer” and thousands of followers: Someone calling himself “Trump God Emperor” sent Weisman “the Nazi iconography of the shiftless, hook-nosed Jew. I was served an image of the gates of Auschwitz, the famous words Arbeit macht Frei replaced without irony with ‘Machen Amerika Great.’ Holocaust taunts, like a path of dollar bills leading into an oven, were followed by Holocaust denial… The Holocaust didn’t happen, but boy, was it cool.”
More than two thousand such messages taught Weisman that “The Jew can be all things to some people … none of them good.” These messages were among the 19,253 messages directed at more than 800 journalists, ten of whom absorbed 83 percent of the total attacks. Overall, the Anti-Defamation League would track 2.6 million anti-Semitic messages posted on Twitter from August 2015 to July 2016.[103]
Weisman and others are “Harassed Jews” because they thought they had outgrown Judaism, beyond some Holocaust consciousness as a fundamental building block of whatever Jewish solidarity they felt. Like most modern victims of anti-Semitism, Holocaust imagery and nostalgia were weaponized against them -- making them harassed, half-hearted, mugged Jews defined by their enemies, still wary of the label and their people.
Weisman, like many such Jews, continues to resist Israel as too “tribal” and Judaism itself as still vaguely embarrassing and distracting from the happy, normal, American life he yearns to lead, yet again. The only kind of Judaism he can tolerate is a “liberal internationalist” kind. He still enjoys “cheeseburgers and pepperoni pizza and Friday nights out too much” to get too serious. And for him, it’s clear: right-wing anti-Semitism is a threat; left-wing anti-Semitism is a minor distraction – to be expected because of Israel’s aggressiveness. “And for God’s sake, don’t get exorcised about the fringe left at the Dyke’s March in Chicago when the orchestrators sit in the West Wing,” Weisman would write. “Yes, anti-Israel sentiment is real on the Left, on campuses and in the Resistance, and some of it swerves beyond the bounds of political sentiment into anti-Semitism. But the real problem lies in the … rising hatred of the alt-right.”
Finally, a small but loud minority of Hostile Jews who hate Trump and hate “the occupation” follow their fury into a true hostility toward Israel and Zionism that also feeds modern left-wing anti-Semitism. These are the activists of IfNotNow and Jewish Voice* for Peace, many of whom harassed Democratic candidates in 2019, demanding they denounce “the Occupation.” The British novelist and Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson characterized these “AsaJews” or “ASHamed Jews” as people with little connection to Judaism who only assert their Jewish heritage to give themselves a kind of standing while seeming brave by bashing Israel.[104]
Numerically, such Jewish critics are negligible but they command much attention. Within the Jewish community, it feeds fears about “our youth” abandoning “us.” Beyond the Jewish community, it helps mainstream anti-Zionism, obscuring the anti-Semitism that often feeds Israel-bashing. Some non-Jews turn “AsaJews” into “IfaJews,” assuming that If a Jew says these awful things about Israel, they must be true and cannot be anti-Semitic.
Conclusion: Israelis want a pro-Israel vote, American Jews cast an American Jewish ballot
For many Israelis, for most of the Orthodox Jews who support Donald Trump, and for Donald Trump himself, Jewish voters face a classic choice in the voting booth: us or them. In a world in which the former British Prime Minister David Cameron called Barack Obama “the most pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian president in history,”[105] in a world in which President Trump proudly retweets claims calling him “the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the word, not just America,”[106] there should be no real choice for “The Jewish Vote.” It should be delivered in one nice package to Donald Trump.
From this perspective, Jews should also be the most enthusiastic friends of the most enthusiastic pro-Israel Christians, Evangelicals. Jews should also top the charts in saying “yes” to the question: “Was Israel given to the Jewish people by God.”[107]
Instead, twice as many White Christian Evangelicals than American Jews answered “yes” to the question about God giving Jews the land of Israel – 82 percent to 40 percent. Similarly, while 69 percent of White Evangelicals feel warmly toward Jews, only 34 percent of Jews feel warmly toward them – which is even lower than Jews’ feelings toward Muslims at 35 percent.[108] And in the 2018 Congressional midterm elections, more than three-quarters of Jewish voters voted Democratic and denounced Donald Trump when surveyed. [109]
The seemingly obvious explanation – that Jews have abandoned Israel – doesn’t fly. Even in a book called Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel, Professor Dov Waxman acknowledges that “American Jewry, as a whole . . . is not as polarized in its views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the public debate suggests.” Waxman characterizes “Most American Jews,” as “ambivalent centrists” who “want peace and favor some Israeli territorial concessions,” “worry about Israeli security,” and remain “highly suspicious about Palestinians’ intentions.”[110]
This paper has argued that the Jewish Vote is driven by other factors, including fear of Evangelicals – most of whom deny global warming, oppose gay marriage, resist immigration for undocumented aliens, abhor abortion and endorse Donald Trump. American Jewish liberal identity does not support voting “just for Israel” in the voting booth nor abandoning a liberal worldview many define as quintessentially American and Jewish.
At the same time, few American Jews accepted the choice as framed by Donald Trump, the media, and an increasingly number of Israeli Jews and Jewish communal leaders. Rather than seeing the choice as loyalty to Trump and Israel – or not – most American Jews framed Trump as bad for America and for Jews and for Israel. The argument then became about what’s best for the Jewish state, not about if you want what’s best for the Jewish state.
So the American Jews’ more relevant “world” was not the one of Trump as Israel’s “best friend” and Obama as a the “most … pro-Palestinian president in history.” Instead, most American Jews lived with a cleaner, more comprehensive, all-or-nothing narrative. They saw Trump as the anti-Semite, his supporters as the threat to Israel and America, and the right-wing Israeli policies Trump supported as being as toxic to Israel as Trump seemed to them to be to America.
The subtleties about the Jewish Vote were lost in a Jewish world filled with people who enjoyed catastrophizing as much as anyone else. The loudest Jewish liberals would yell about Israel abandoning liberalism as the loudest Israelis yelled about American Jews abandoning Israel. Both extremes -- and the reporters echoing them - filtered any of the complexities and nuances in the positions most people took.
In this polarized Age of Trump, even the fight against anti-Semitism became a partisan flashpoint. Once, a wide swath of Jews easily united in common cause against common enemies. Suddenly, when “Herzl” liberals called out anti-Semitism on the Left, they often encountered claims that “the white nationalist, xenophobic far-right is the clear source of rising anti-Semitic violence in this country,” as Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at J Street, put it. “Instead of seriously combating that threat — which the president has stoked with his own hateful rhetoric — the Trump administration and its allies in the right-wing minority of the Jewish community prefer to focus overwhelming attention on nonviolent campus critics of Israel,” Williams insisted, “and to wield false accusations of anti-Semitism as a partisan weapon against progressives.”[111]
There is a Jewish vote—a solid, stable, liberal Democratic majority, usually in the 70-percent range in presidential elections. It rarely affects the national outcome but it does reflect the American Jewish mentality. In so many ways, the liberal Democratic Jews who constitute the Jewish vote are living and expressing the new Jewish consensus: ultimately, they are more pro-choice than pro-Israel, anti-Trump and anti-Bibi but not anti-Israel, even as most focus on domestic concerns rather than international affairs.
In doing so, American Jews were following a script that was written for them decades ago, when the poet Emma Lazarus welcomed them – and so many others of “your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses” yearning to breathe free.” As the legendary twentieth-century Jewish communal leader Max Fisher explained, the loyalty hierarchy was clear: “My fundamental responsibility was as an American,” he was quoted as saying in his biography. “Then as an American Jewish leader. And finally, I had my love for Israel.”[112]
Some view this as American Jews’ corrupt bargain and great betrayal of their people. Most American Jews toast it as their golden opportunity. More empowered than all-powerful, once-persecuted Jews after thousands of years of suffering, can now exercise their national responsibility freely as proud - and ever more normal - Americans.
[1] Special to NJJN, “Orthodox Jews emerging as Trump’s truest belivers,” New Jersey Jews News, September 26, 2017 https://njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com/orthodox-jews-emerging-as-trumps-truest-believers/
[2] “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project (blog), October 1, 2013, 3, https://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/.
[4] Emma Green, “Are Democrats Losing the Jews?,” The Atlantic, November 13, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/are-democrats-losing-the-jews/382665/.
[5] “U.S. Voter Turnout Trails Most Developed Countries,” Pew Research Center (blog), n.d., https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/21/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/.
[6] Ira Sheskin, “Why All This Attention to 2% of the Electorate?: The Jewish Vote in the Presidential Election” (n.d.). The American National Election Study estimated a Jewish turnout of 96 percent in 2008 with 84 percent of Jews self-reporting as always or almost-always voting.
[7]Ben Sales, "Congress is now three times as Jewish as the US is," Times of Israel, January 4, 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/congress-is-now-three-times-as-jewish-as-the-us-is/
[8]Kenneth Wald quoted in Aiden Pink, “Jewish Voters Could Swing Key Congress Races- and Help Democrats Take Back Congress,” Forward, May 8, 2018, https://forward.com/news/national/398443/jews-could-be-key-to-democrats-taking-back-congress/
[9] Hamilton Jordan, Confidential File, Box 34, File “Foreign Policy/Domestic Politics Memo, HJ Memo, 6/77,” Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, GA, declassified, June 12, 1990.
[10] Hamilton Jordan to Jimmy Carter, Office of the Chief of Staff Files, Hamilton Jordan's Confidential Files, Foreign Policy/Domestic Politics Memo, pp. 27-28, HJ Memo, 6/77, Container 34a, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, Georgia, https://jimmycarterlibrary.gov/digital_library/cos/142099/34/cos_142099_34a_24-Foreign_policy_domestic_politics_memo.pdf
[11] Aiden Pink, “Who are Jews Backing in the Democratic Race? Hint: Not Bernie, or Biden,” The Forward, July 28, 2019.
[12] Thomas B. Edsall, Alan Cooperman, " GOP Uses Remarks to Court Jews," Washington Post, March 13, 2003. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/03/13/gop-uses-remarks-to-court-jews/74571902-fe63-4543-a972-a5d642546321/
[13] Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy, “The new Gilded Age: Close to half of all super-PAC money comes from 50 donors,” The Washington Post, April 15 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-new-gilded-age-close-to-half-of-all-super-pac-money-comes-from-50-donors/2016/04/15/63dc363c-01b4-11e6-9d36-33d198ea26c5_story.html
[14] JJ Goldber, “What Campaign Donor Lists Tell Us about Changing Nature of Jewish Political”, Forward, April 19 2016, https://forward.com/opinion/338835/what-campaign-donor-lists-tell-us-about-changing-nature-of-jewish-political/
[15] Megan Janetsky, “Trump’s top donors: Where are they now?”, Open Secrets News, January 18, 2018, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/01/trump-donors-1-year-later/
[16] Allison Kaplan Sommer , “Adelson, Who Donated Over $100 Million to the GOP, 'Watching' Results With Trump”, Haaretz, November 7 2018,https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-adelson-reportedly-watches-election-with-trump-1.6632299
[17] John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).
[18] Matthew Yglesias, “One Reason Congress Is so Pro-Israel? Fundraising,” Vox, July 28, 2014, https://www.vox.com/2014/7/28/5945235/one-reason-congress-is-so-pro-israel-fundraising.
[19] Emma Green, “Are Democrats Losing the Jews?”, The Atlantic, November 13, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/are-democrats-losing-the-jews/382665/
[20] “Jews Donated More To Buttigieg Than All Other Democrats – The Forward,” accessed October 1, 2019, https://forward.com/news/national/428388/who-are-jews-backing-in-the-democratic-race-hint-not-bernie-or-biden/.
[21] Gallup Inc, “American Jews, Politics and Israel,” Gallup.com, n.d., https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/265898/american-jews-politics-israel.aspx.
[22] Theodore Sasson et al., “Still Connected: American Jewish Attitudes about Israel” (Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University, August 2010), https://www.brandeis.edu/cmjs/pdfs/still.connected.08.25.10.3.pdf.
[23] Maegan Vazquez and Jim Acosta CNN, “Jewish Leaders Outraged by Trump Saying Jews Disloyal If They Vote for Democrats,” CNN, n.d., https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/20/politics/donald-trump-jewish-americans-democrat-disloyalty/index.html.
[24] Gil Troy, See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate, Revised and Expanded Edition, 1996; Gil Troy, Arthur Schlesinger, and Fred Israel, History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-2008, 4th Edition (Facts on File Library of American History, 2011).
[25] Norman Berdichevsky, “American Jews’ Paradoxical Allegiance to the Democratic Party,” September 2010, https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?sec_id=70125.
[26] Peter Beinart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” June 10, 2010, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/06/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/.
[27] Leon Wieseltier, “Because they Believe,” New York Times Book Review, Sept. 8, 2009, p. 1.
[28] Leonard Fein, Where Are We: The Inner Life of America’s Jews, 1st Edition (Harpercollins, 1988).
[29] Milton Himmelfarb, “The Jewish Vote (Again),” Commentary, June 1973, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-jewish-vote-again/.
[30] Kenneth Wald, The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
[31] Jonathan Neumann, To Heal the World?: How the Jewish Left Corrupts Judaism and Endangers Israel (St. Martin’s Press Inc., 2018).
[32] Byron Sherwin, Jewish Ethics for the Twenty-First Century: Living in the Image of God, Library of Jewish Philosophy (Syracuse University Press, 2000).
[33] Deborah Dash Moore, “THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWISH POLITICAL TRADITION AND JEWISH CIVIL RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES,” Jewish Political Studies Review 2, no. 1/2 (Spring 1990): 8.
[34] “A Portrait of American Orthodox Jews,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project (blog), August 26, 2015, https://www.pewforum.org/2015/08/26/a-portrait-of-american-orthodox-jews/.
[35] Edward Shapiro, in We Are Many: Reflections On American Jewish History and Identity (Syracuse University Press, 2005), 173.
[36] Steven M. Cohen and Charles S. Liebman, “American Jewish Liberalism: Unravelling the Strands,” Public Opinion Quarterly 61, no. 3 (November 1, 1997): 1, https://doi.org/10.1086/297806.
[38] Irving Kristol, “On the Political Stupidity of the Jews,” Azure, Autumn, 1999, https://tikvahfund.org/uncategorized/on-the-political-stupidity-of-the-jews/
[40] Kenneth Wald, in The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 8.
[41] “Trump To Jewish Republicans: ‘I’m A Negotiator Like You Folks,’” NPR.org, n.d., https://www.npr.org/2015/12/03/458329895/trump-to-jewish-republicans-im-a-negotiator-like-you-folks.
[42] Amy Chozick, “Sara Ehrman, a Strong-Willed Adviser with Deep Ties to the Clintons, Dies at 98,” New York Times, June 5, 2017, D:8.
[43] “Read Hillary Clinton’s Speech to AIPAC,” Time, n.d., https://time.com/4265947/hillary-clinton-aipac-speech-transcript/.
[44] “Cruz Swaps Mic for Rolling Pin to Tour Matzo Bakery,” ABC News, n.d., https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ted-cruz-swaps-mic-rolling-pin-tour-matzah/story?id=38232012.
[45] David Wright CNN, “Ted Cruz: Donald Trump ‘embodies New York Values’ - CNNPolitics,” CNN, n.d., https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/13/politics/ted-cruz-donald-trump-new-york-values/index.html; “What Are New York Values to People in New York?,” n.d., https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-are-new-york-values-to-people-in-new-york/.
[46] Max Fisher, “Here Is Clinton and Sanders’s Remarkable Exchange on Israel-Palestine — and Why It Matters,” Vox, April 15, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/4/15/11437602/clinton-sanders-israel-palestine-debate.
[47] Gal Beckerman, “Clinton Praises MDA inclusion to IRC,” Jerusalem Post, June 26, 2006, https://www.jpost.com/International/Clinton-praises-MDA-inclusion-to-IRC.
[48] Anne Gearan “For Hillary and Bibi, a long and sometimes fraught relationship”, The Washington Post, March 1 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-hillary-and-bibi-a-long-and-sometimes-fraught-relationship/2015/03/01/fe6c7a26-bea9-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html
[49] Shmuley Boteach “No Holds Barred: Hillary’s Clinton’s Troubling Relationship with Isarel-Hating Adviser, The Jerusalem Post, January 11, 2016, https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/No-Holds-Barred-Hillarys-Clintons-troubling-relationship-with-Israel-hating-adviser-441158
[50] JNS.org, “Hillary Clinton, in Jerusalem, Says Israel Lacks Empathy for Palestinians, The New York Jewish Week, December 4 2012, https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/hillary-clinton-in-jerusalem-says-israel-lacks-empathy-for-palestinians/
[51] Joseph Berger, “Bernie Sanders is Jewish but he Doesn’t Like to Talk about it” The New York Times, Feb 24, 2016 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/us/politics/bernie-sanders-jewish.html
[52] Yair Rosenberg, “Bernie Sanders Was Asked an Anti-Semitic Question. Here’s How He should Have Answered”, Tablet Magazine, April 10, 2016, https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/199685/bernie-sanders-was-asked-an-anti-semitic-question-heres-how-he-should-have-answered
[54] Bernie Sanders, “How to Fight Anti-Semitism,” Jewish Currents, Nov. 11, 2019, https://jewishcurrents.org/how-to-fight-antisemitism/
[55] “Barack Obama - Jewish Heritage Month Speech at Adas Israel Congregation,” n.d., https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobama/barackobamaadasisraelcongregation.htm.
[56] Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on Jewish American Heritage Month,” whitehouse.gov, May 22, 2015, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/05/22/remarks-president-jewish-american-heritage-month.
[57] Chemi Shalev, “Obama’s Message: I Represent American Jewish Values Better than Netanyahu,” May 22, 2015, https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-obama-s-message-i-represent-u-s-jewish-values-better-than-bibi-1.5365349.
[58] Ira Sheskin, “Why All This Attention to 2% of the Electorate?: The Jewish Vote in the Presidential Election” (n.d.). The American National Election Study estimated a Jewish turnout of 96 percent in 2008 with 84 percent of Jews self-reporting as always or almost-always voting.
[59] Jonathan Rhynhold, “Israel, the Pro-Israel Lobby, American Jews and the Iran deal,” https://www.idc.ac.il/en/schools/government/uselections/Documents/Rynhold%20Jonathan%20-%20Israel,%20the%20Pro-Israel%20Lobby,%20American%20Jews%20and%20the%20Iran%20deal.pdf
[60] “The Quotable Ed Koch: Wit, Wisdom, and One-Liners,” Intelligencer, n.d., http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/02/ed-koch-quotes-wit-wisdom-one-liners.html.
[61] “Bush’s Statement on the Middle East”, April 4 2002 https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/international/bushs-statement-on-the-middle-east.html?auth=login-facebook&login=facebook
[63] Arianna Huffington, “Curbing New Hampshire: Larry David Stumps for Obama,” HuffPost, 28:31 500, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/curbing-new-hampshire-lar_b_80465.
[64]Hilary Leila Kriege,”Exit Polls: 78% of Jews Voted for Obama,” The Jerusalem Post, November 5 2018,
https://www.jpost.com/International/Exit-polls-78-percent-of-Jews-voted-for-Obama
[65] Lizette Alvarez, “Republicans Intensify Drive to Win Over Jewish Voters”, The New York Times, September 26 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/us/politics/republicans-go-after-jewish-vote.html
[66] “On the Political Stupidity of the Jews,” The Tikvah Fund, December 3, 2013, https://tikvahfund.org/uncategorized/on-the-political-stupidity-of-the-jews/.
[67] Jim Norman, “U.S. Jews' Support for Obama Stabilizes After Two-Year Drop”, Gallup, January 26 2016, https://news.gallup.com/poll/188837/jews-support-obama-stabilizes-two-year-drop.aspx
[68]Frank Newport, “Obama’s Approval Advantage Among U.S. Jews Narrows” Gallup, April 10 2015, https://news.gallup.com/poll/182366/obama-approval-advantage-among-jews-narrows.aspx
[69] Jim Norman, “U.S. Jews' Support for Obama Stabilizes After Two-Year Drop”, Gallup, January 26 2016, https://news.gallup.com/poll/188837/jews-support-obama-stabilizes-two-year-drop.aspx
[70] Jim Norman, “U.S. Jews' Support for Obama Stabilizes After Two-Year Drop”, Gallup, January 26 2016, https://news.gallup.com/poll/188837/jews-support-obama-stabilizes-two-year-drop.aspx
[71] Ben Shapiro, “The Jew-hating Obama Administration,” Creators, July 2, 2014 https://www.creators.com/read/ben-shapiro/07/14/the-jew-hating-obama-administration
[72] Michael Wilner, “An Ugly Fight on Iran - Middle East - Jerusalem Post,” The Jerusalem Post, August 13, 2015, https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran/Special-Report-An-ugly-fight-on-Iran-412059.
[73] David Litt, “How Obama Was Our Most Jewish President- and Trump Our Least” Forward, September 28 2017, https://forward.com/opinion/383829/how-obama-was-our-most-jewish-president-and-trump-our-least/
[74] Gregory Korte, “ I, too, am a Jew’: Obama warns of growing anti-Semitism” USA Today, January 27, 2016, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/01/27/obama-holocaust-remembrance-anti-semitism/79440396/
[75] David Nakamura, “Obama: ‘We are all Jews’ in face of rising anti-Semitism,” The Washington Post, January 28, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/28/obama-we-are-all-jews-in-face-of-rising-anti-semitism/
[76] Thomas Friedman, “Iran and the Obama Doctrine - The New York Times,” April 5, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/opinion/thomas-friedman-the-obama-doctrine-and-iran-interview.html.
[77] Jonathan Rhynhold, “Israel, the Pro-Israel Lobby, American Jews and the Iran deal,” https://www.idc.ac.il/en/schools/government/uselections/Documents/Rynhold%20Jonathan%20-%20Israel,%20the%20Pro-Israel%20Lobby,%20American%20Jews%20and%20the%20Iran%20deal.pdf
[78] Steven M. Cohen, “New Poll: U.S. Jews support Iran deal, despite misgivings”, Jewish Journal, July 23, 2015, https://jewishjournal.com/news/nation/176121/
[79] “Poll; American Jewish Support for Iran Deal Exceeds Support Among General Population”, J Street, June 10, 2015, https://jstreet.org/press-releases/poll-american-jewish-support-for-iran-deal-exceeds-support-among-general-population/#.Xcv2CTMzaUk
[80] Jonathan Rhynhold, “Israel, the Pro-Israel Lobby, American Jews and the Iran deal,” https://www.idc.ac.il/en/schools/government/uselections/Documents/Rynhold%20Jonathan%20-%20Israel,%20the%20Pro-Israel%20Lobby,%20American%20Jews%20and%20the%20Iran%20deal.pdf
[81] Uri Heilman, “Trump Meets With Orthodox Jews and Reveals His Israel Advisers - His Jewish Lawyers,” Haaretz, April 16, 2016, https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/trump-meets-with-orthodox-jews-name-drops-his-jewish-lawyers-1.5433577.
[82] J Street Poll, “The 2018 Jewish Vote, National Post-Election Survey,” November, 2018, https://jstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/J-Street-2018-Election-Night-Survey-Presentation-11072018.pdf
[83] Julie Zauzmer “In 2016, people have read anti-Semitic tweets 10 billion times, many from Trump supporters”, Washington Post, October 19 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/10/19/in-one-year-people-have-read-anti-semitic-tweets-a-staggering-10-billion-times/
[84] Jonathan Weisman, ((Semitism)) Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump (St Martin’s Press, 2018)
[85] Bethany Mandel “ My Trump Tweets Earned Me So Many Anti-Semitic Haters That I Bought a Gun” Forward, March 21, 2016, https://forward.com/opinion/336159/my-trump-tweets-earned-me-so-many-anti-semitic-haters-that-i-bought-a-gun/
[86] Dana Schwarz, “An Open Letter to Jared Kushner, From One of Your Jewish Employees,” Observer (blog), July 5, 2016, https://observer.com/2016/07/an-open-letter-to-jared-kushner-from-one-of-your-jewish-employees/.
[87] Jared Kushner, “Jared Kushner: The Donald Trump I Know,” Observer (blog), July 6, 2016, https://observer.com/2016/07/jared-kushner-the-donald-trump-i-know/.
[88] “Bill Kristol on Twitter: ‘The GOP Tax Bill’s Bringing out My Inner Socialist. The Sex Scandals Are Bringing out My Inner Feminist. Donald Trump and Roy Moore Are Bringing out My Inner Liberal. WHAT IS HAPPENING?’ / Twitter,” Twitter, n.d., https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/933074207637991424.
[89] Jane Coaston, “Bill Kristol Thinks ‘People Are Just Too Unhappy with the Status Quo,’” Vox, January 10, 2018, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/10/16865502/bill-kristol-trump-status-quo.
[90] Jonah Goldberg, “Jonah Goldberg on Twitter: ‘Jerusalem Was a Jewish Capital Roughly 1,000 Years before Jesus Was Born and 1,500 Years before Mohammad Was Born. #History Https://T.Co/C669MejAF1’ / Twitter,” Twitter, n.d., https://twitter.com/jonahnro/status/938494741964042240.
[91] “KCRW’s Left Right and Center - Posts,” n.d., https://www.facebook.com/KCRWLeftRightandCenter/posts/on-the-decision-to-move-the-us-embassy-to-jerusalem-david-frum-said-the-presiden/1753607134673154/.
[92] Quoted in Gil Troy, See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate (New York: 1991, 1996).
[94] Nathan Guttman, “Donald Trump Works His Magic on a Frustrated AIPAC”, Forward, March 21, 2016, https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/336578/donald-trump-works-his-magic-on-a-frustrated-aipac/
[95] “Praise and Alarm From American Jews Over Trump’s Jerusalem Move - The New York Times,” n.d., https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/us/trump-jerusalem-jews.html.
[96] “Rabbi Rick Jacobs Responds To Today’s White House Statement On Jerusalem,” URJ, December 6, 2017, https://urj.org/blog/2017/12/06/rabbi-rick-jacobs-responds-todays-white-house-statement-jerusalem.
[97] “Debates with Israel Weigh on Reform Movement’s Largest-Ever Gathering,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (blog), December 8, 2017, https://www.jta.org/2017/12/08/united-states/strained-ties-with-israel-weigh-on-reform-movements-largest-ever-gathering.
[98] “URJ Not Opposed to Jerusalem Decision,” Heritage Florida Jewish News, n.d., https://www.heritagefl.com/story/2018/01/05/news/urj-not-opposed-to-jerusalem-decision/9087.html.
[99] “Are Some Reform Leaders Now Embracing Trump’s Jerusalem Decision?,” Algemeiner.com, n.d., https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/01/03/are-some-reform-leaders-now-embracing-trumps-jerusalem-decision/.
[100] “Rabbi Rick Jacobs: URJ Continues to Deepen Commitments to and Investment in Israel,” URJ, December 15, 2017, https://urj.org/blog/2017/12/15/rabbi-rick-jacobs-urj-continues-deepen-commitments-and-investment-israel.
[102] Jonathan Weisman, (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in the Age of Trump, 1st Edition (St. Martin’s Press Inc., 2018).
[103] “CR_4862_Journalism-Task-Force_v2.Pdf,” accessed September 29, 2019, https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/press-center/CR_4862_Journalism-Task-Force_v2.pdf.
[104] Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (London, 2010).
[105] “Cameron: Obama Was Most pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab US President Ever - Diaspora - Jerusalem Post,” n.d., https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Cameron-Obama-was-most-pro-Palestinian-and-pro-Arab-US-president-ever-602699.
[106] “Donald J. Trump on Twitter: ‘“Thank You to Wayne Allyn Root for the Very Nice Words. “President Trump Is the Greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the History of the World, Not Just America, He Is the Best President for Israel in the History of the World...and the Jewish People in Israel Love Him....’ / Twitter,” Twitter, n.d., https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1164138795475881986.
[107] Jon Perr, “Why Jewish Voters Still Won’t Support Republicans in 2016,” Daily Kos, February 28, 2016, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/28/1490970/-Why-Jewish-voters-still-won-t-support-Republicans-in-2016.
[108] Cathy Lynn Grossman, “Americans view Jews, Christians warmly; atheists, Muslims get cold shoulder,” National Catholic Reporter, July 16, 2014
[109] Jonathan Lemire and Darlene Superville “Trump: Any Jew Voting Democratic is uniformed or disloyal” AP News, August 21, 2019, https://apnews.com/1bc3065eb2e4414289ef0ac1ac4ebaf7
[110] Dov Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016).
[111] “Anti-Semitism Event at Justice Department Turns into pro-Israel Rally,” n.d., https://news.yahoo.com/anti-semitism-summit-justice-department-212905266.html.
[112] Peter Golden, in Quiet Diplomat: A Biography of Max M. Fisher, (Cornwall Books, n.d.), 323.
Source: Gil Troy, “The Jewish Vote 2020: More Empowered Than Powerful,” Ruderman Family Foundation, (August 24, 2020).
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